Awesome Practice

Last night we finally got back to our regular Thursday night practices with some friends and our demo group. As was usual, we ran three nested courses that were of significant difficulty. The courses included tight turns, wrapping jumps, serpentines, and obstacle discrimination. It was great!

The funny thing is that Vegas very obviously loved it as much as ever - if not more so. She was like a slingshot off of nearly every obstacle and I was full-on running almost the entire time. She was a complete nut and I really had to be on my toes to give her the correct queues. What becomes more and more apparent though is how much potential I have to stop her forward motion into some obstacles based upon how soon I pull away, the shift of my shoulders, etc. I really need to be more and more aware of this and specifically, aware of this before I do it instead of after. We are really to the stage where I need to finetune my handling skills including body awareness and queues I give her unknowingly. A longer term goal is to work on increased distance handling; however, for right now I need to be firm in what I do and giving her the right queues then assessing her responses to them.

Needless to say though, we had a blast and she went home a very hungry then very tired girl.